Facebook rolls out new features for Indian businesses

NEW YORK: In a move to make its Pages feature valuable for businesses online, Facebook on Thursday announced two new Page sections - Services and Shop - for emerging markets including in India where 57 per cent of people on Facebook are connected to a business.

The Shop section provides businesses with a new way to prominently display the products they are selling on their Page.

It allows people to easily discover, browse and make offers to purchase products through messaging from the businesses they care about, Facebook said in a statement.

The Services section allows service businesses to showcase a list of their offerings on their Page.

If we look at the Indian small and medium businesses (SMB), over 1.99 billion interactions are being generated between businesses and people in the country.

There were two million SMB Pages on Facebook in India as of October last year.

"With the Shops and Services sections on Pages, businesses around the world can help people discover the products and services they care about in a more visually appealing way," said Adrian Nam, a product marketing manager at Facebook.

Facebook launched Pages to help people market their businesses and make customers learn about products and services for free.

Services section makes it easier for people to find the information they are looking for and decide whether to work with the business.

Globally, more than one billion people on Facebook are connected to at least one business.

"The Shops and Services sections are a continuation of our efforts to make Facebook Pages the most valuable online presence for the more than 60 million businesses around the world that use Pages each month," added Ryan Ebanks, another product marketing manager at Facebook.